A household gift might include the house’s yard (or the apartment’s balcony!)... things of great beauty and the utilitarian (if not both). Ponder on these ideas for outdoor gifts (asterisked items in the Instructions)...

• Landscape design

• Braided burlap doormats

• Bird houses/feeders**

• Bird seed

• Mole repellant**

• A frisbee bird bath - clip three stiff wire plant hangers to holes drilled in the rim, and hang it in a tree...

• Bird-scaring snakes - 2-foot lengths of garden hose painted with splotches of another color, to be draped in ripening berry bushes or fruit trees...

• CDs as bird and deer scarers - hang (from trees, fences, posts, etc.) two compact disks together with the flashy sides facing out (yes, there is a use for those "try this" CDs you get in the mail!)

• Christmas decorations for an outdoor tree for the critters**

• Old bricks to build with

• Glass tubing wind chimes (with center square of light metal; hung from a disk or half-ball)

• Garden mulch or soil enhancement

• A beautiful watering can

• A drip irrigation system (they’re pretty easy and inexpensive to put in - I’ve done two... I only needed my husband’s extra strength to push the PVC pipe into the joiner fittings)

• Compost bins**

• A compost heap turner

• Dirt-screening boxes for the gardener (i.e., 2 or 3 wooden frames with different sizes of metal screening tacked to them, for sifting out various sizes of stones)

• A no-stoop leaf scoop**

• Concrete stepping stones

• Trellises (wood, bamboo, metal)

• Flower boxes made from bark-covered tree slabs<

• A strawberry barrel or pot (and a nursery gift certificate for spring?)

• Metal or wooden tomato cages

• Wall-O-Waters

• Garden stakes/tags (see "Plant Markers")**

• Beneficial insect attractant**

• Crushed eggshells - to sprinkle over newly-planted seeds (marking the rows, and helping to keep birds and bugs away)

• Yard signs (house numbers; owner’s names; message rocks; "Garden of Eatin"; etc.)

• Pink flamingos!?

• A garden gate made from a refurbished metal bedstead

• A cold frame - just hinge a window to the back of a plywood frame that’s higher at the back than at the front... the window to be propped open at varying heights with sticks

• A charcoal starter**

• Flower and veggie seeds, promises of plant starts, gift certificates to bulb and fruit tree catalogs

• Eggshell seed starters filled with potting soil, packaged in egg cartons

• Phonograph record plant pots**

• A dibble stick, for seed planting

• "Spaghetti sauce garden seeds" - tomatoes, basil, garlic, onion, green pepper

• "Borscht seeds" - cabbage, beets, tomatoes, carrots, onion, dill

• Luminarias (see the Outdoor Embellishments section)

• A mailbox for the backyard... to hold often-used small garden tools/gloves